


The Cruelest Parts

by Beeskeez



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A bit of politics a lot of sexual tension, Completely oblivious Sandor, Could Be Canon, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sex, F/M, Happily Ever After (probably), Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Lady of Winterfell Sansa Stark, Protective Sandor Clegane, Reluctant Sandor, Slow(ish) Burn, Sworn Shields (ASoIaF), Tormund and Sandor are bros, if you don't count the last two seasons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26928187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beeskeez/pseuds/Beeskeez
Summary: By now, the snow is light underfoot, giving way to patches of green in parts. Slowly turning from a white wasteland to the damp scent of new life.Stranger’s hooves sink into the patchy brown sludge, making him whinny in disapproval. The old horse isn’t interested in learning how to negotiate unfamiliar terrain. When they round the final bend in the King’s Road and see Winterfell, Sandor wonders if he doesn’t feel the same way.
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 16
Kudos: 85





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> I love Sansa and Sandor as a couple and have always wanted to write a fic looking at what their lives would be like if they both survived the great war and Sandor made his way up to Winterfell.
> 
> This story is written in three parts, looking at the three stages of the evolution of their relationship as I dearly like to imagine it would've happened.
> 
> This story has been a few years in the making: I started writing it before the final season of the show aired, so you'll have to forgive me a fair few inconsistencies with Season 8 canon #RIPNedUmber (but, I mean, do we even count season 8 as canon anyway?).

> _ The woods are lovely, dark and deep, _
> 
> _ But I have promises to keep, _
> 
> _ And miles to go before I sleep. _
> 
> \- Robert Frost

* * *

After the war, it’s like the world falls silent.

Not surprising, when there are so few of them left by the end. Fewer still with something to go back to, without the ring of steel and the thrum of blood in their ears.

That was the problem with wars. They bred soldiers. Men who knew the feel of flesh giving way under their blade, of hands drenched in hot blood up to the elbow, and the smell of death thick in the air.

Men like him.

Peace time didn’t need men like that.

They have a name for them in the streets when it’s all over. The Bastard’s Brotherhood, they call them – him and the other ones who had gone north on that first journey with Snow. Or what’s left of them anyway, which isn’t much these days.

It should be an insult, but it’s said with a kind of reverence he doesn’t understand. The common folk down in Flea Bottom whisper his name as he walks past. Lowborn boys ask to squire for him. Children cheer him in the streets. High praise for a dog with a sword whose only talent is cutting men in two with one stroke.

A talent he’s found he’s losing, as the years go on and his joints start to ache and his wounds from that fight with the Tarth bitch give him trouble, every now and again. 

At least he likes to think it's the talent he’s losing and not just the taste for it. What place is there in the world for a killer who doesn’t like killing?

Snow suggests he go back to the  Westerlands . Offers him  Casterly Rock, when Sandor makes it clear he wouldn’t deign to piss on the  cess pit that is Clegane Keep, even if he is lord of it now by all rights, with Gregor dead. Good fucking riddance.

It’s so ridiculous he can’t even  laugh, he can only shake his head. Wonder if it’s all some ploy by Snow to get the killers out of King’s Landing and make space for the type of man that peacetime does need: men like the Imp who are slow with a sword but quick with words.

“Would you go north, then?” Snow asks, a serious tone in his voice. “From what I hear Tormund and my sister aren’t making much progress on finding peace between the Wildlings and the  northmen .”

Sandor snorted. “You think I give a fuck about some Wildings killing some Umbers?

“It’s my sister I’m worried about.”

And there at the edges of his mind, there’s a fleeting glimpse of red, that catches and holds. Words whispered in the night a lifetime ago, while flames lit the night sky, swirl at the edge of his consciousness.

“Aye,” he says, not quite meaning to form the words. “I’ll go north.”

It had been four years since he rode south. Four years since he’d seen Sansa Stark last, although he remembers it well enough. 

The image of her standing at the gates, looking every bit as regal as the Dragon Queen as she watched them ride south, had sustained him as he joined Snow on the march to King’s Landing. He’d been so certain then that he rode to his death and that she was the last beautiful woman he’d ever see. For reasons he hadn’t understood then, and still didn’t understand now, he’d been glad of that fact.

But by some miracle, or the blessing of whatever fucking god there might be, or most likely by sheer dumb luck, he hadn’t died. He’d come out with scars on his shoulder and arm that rivalled his face, but they still worked and so did the rest of him, while Gregor was somewhere in the  harbour of King’s Landing, weighed down with rocks and slowly rotting as fish ate away at his body.

That memory had long since replaced seeing Sansa Stark waving farewell at the gates of Winterfell as his happiest memory. He’s found it easy enough after that not to think of the girl who now ruled as Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North.

Still the further north they get, the more the red begins to creep back into his mind. Lingering more and more every day until he can’t get the thought out of his head.

He winds his way up the King's Road slowly. Snow had tried to send some men with him, but Sandor told him where he could shove his escort and after that Jon had tacitly agreed to let him make his own plans for the journey. 

So he rides north alone, making camp on the ground more often than not, staying at inns only when his wine skins begin to run dry.

He’s only mildly surprised when he stops off at the inn at Moat Cailin to try and find some good  Dornish red and instead finds Tormund  Giantsbane waiting for him.

“You’re even uglier than you were last time I saw you,” the wildling says, but he grasps Sandor’s arm in a warm grip.

“You’re just as bloody ugly as I remember you being,” he says back, and it may as well have only been two days and not two years since he last saw the man.

It’s not really true though. The wildling’s hair is thinning, cheeks hollowing out. Dark circles ring his eyes. Exhausted, perhaps, or at least well on his way there. 

“Jon says you’re heading to Castle Black,” the wildling says, beckoning him over to a table and passing a flagon to him without asking if he wants it. “Can’t stay away from me, eh, Hound?”

“Heard you were doing a piss poor job of being a Lord in the North. Thought you might need the help.”

The wildling’s booming laugh is as loud as ever, despite his tired appearance. “Free folk aren’t meant to be lords. Should’ve told the boy as much when he asked me to take over at Castle Black. Whoever heard of a Lord at the Wall? Fucking ridiculous.”

“Why not go north then? Not like the night king’s going to be there to stop you.”

“Aye no night king, and nothing else either. Everything that was there died when the army of the dead marched south. Those who have gone north have come back half-starved, if they made it back at all.”

“Doesn’t explain why you’re here in Moat Cailin and not tucked away in your castle keeping yourself warm with all the ale and whores you can get your hands on.”

Tormund shrugs. “I was headed south anyway. To Winterfell, for a gathering of all the northern lords. Snow said you were  coming and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to have you with me when I get there.”

His path along the King’s Road was always going to take him past Winterfell, but Sandor hadn’t planned to stop. The thought of going back there, of seeing her again, dredges up too many memories he’s happier forgetting.

“I've had enough of these fucking lords to last me a lifetime. I’ll keep your castle nice and warm for you ‘til you get back.”

The wildling grimaces. “Not too sure whether some of these little lordlings are planning for me to make it back.”

"That’s unfortunate,” Sandor says, although he’s unsure just who it’s unfortunate for. Himself, most likely, since he knows now without a shadow of a doubt that he’s Winterfell bound.

The snow on the ground is different to the snow he remembers from the North. That had been dense, icy, off-set by bitterly cold winds that seemed to bite right through a man’s clothing and down into his blood. A snow that felt like it carried death with it.

By now, the snow is light underfoot, giving way to patches of green in parts. Slowly turning from a white wasteland to the damp scent of new life.

Stranger’s hooves sink into the patchy brown sludge, making him whinny in disapproval. The old horse isn’t interested in learning how to negotiate unfamiliar terrain. When they round the final bend in the King’s Road and see Winterfell, Sandor wonders if he doesn’t feel the same way.

A cluster of horsemen, holding a white banner with a wolf flapping on it in the crisp wind, ride out to meet them.

Tormund snorts as they approach. “They always send these stupid fucking lord’s welcome parties. Jealous, Hound?”

“Remind me why we’re here, again?” he snaps back, and Tormund just laughs.

The men escort them inside the castle gates. It’s raining, and there’s no one outside to meet them, although he can see eyes peeping over the battlements high above to get a look at the new guests. He scans the eyes, searching for one  set in particular . He doesn’t find it.

Tormund leads his band of wildlings into the great hall. Sandor sidles in last, cursing himself even as he does it for behaving like a bashful child. 

She’s sitting at the front of the room, wearing a thin blue dress that traces every part of her body in a way he doesn’t want to look at. His mouth goes dry when he sees her. 

She’s always been beautiful, but she’s something else now too. Something that’s both captivating and awful to look upon. The smile that she fixes on Tormund is delicate but impenetrable, so that it’s impossible to tell whether she’s planning to bed him or murder him in his sleep or any number of possibilities in between.

Then her eyes light on him and that impenetrable smile falters, for just a second. Her mouth opens slightly, like she’s about to speak and her blue eyes catch his and hold without flinching. For one second and then another, and another still until he can’t stand to keep looking and looks down at the ground.

When he looks back up, the smile has slammed back into place and her eyes skip away, over the rest of the room, coming back to land on Tormund.

“Welcome to Winterfell, my Lord.” Her voice is deeper than he remembers. “I must confess to being somewhat confused when my men said you rode in from the south.”

“I hate to have deprived you of my excellent company for any longer than was necessary, my lady, but we had to make a small detour to visit an old friend.” Tormund glances at him and her gaze follows.

“ So I see.” She pauses, looking at him again. “Lord Clegane, it’s good to see you.”

He wants to tell her where she can shove her titles, just like he used to do. That Lord Clegane was his father, his brother, people he hated. That she should know better.

But the words dry up in his throat, and everyone is looking, so instead he just nods and looks away again.

“Despite your detour, I understand the others are still several days away.” Her focus is back on Tormund and he feels the strangely tight feeling in his chest release just a little. “I hope you’ll be able to keep yourself entertained while you wait.”

“Aye,” Tormund  says and a look passes between them. He wonders if they haven’t planned it to be that way, the wildlings arriving before the others, although Tormund just smiles and says jovially, “I'm sure we’ll manage.”

“We’ll feast tonight,” Sansa says. “For now, I’m sure you must be tired from your journey. Jarred will show your men where to make camp and  Maester Dargood can show you and Lord Clegane to your rooms.”

“My room?” he says, without thinking too much. The eyes lock back on to him, and he remembers exactly why he didn’t want to come here.

“Yes, my lord. Even in the North, we manage to find room for visiting nobility to sleep indoors.” He does look at her then, and for the briefest moment he thinks he sees a spark of mocking in her eyes, although it’s gone so  quickly he can’t be sure it was ever there to begin with.

He goes late to the feast that evening for no good reason. Maybe he wants to prove to anyone who might care to know that he’s still the same Hound, not giving a shit about protocols. Or maybe he’s just scared of her staring at him some more.

Despite his late entrance, there’s a space at the head table right next to her.

For a few moments, he considers pretending not to have seen it and taking a seat with the drunk band of wildlings Tormund has dragged with them. They’re deep in their cups already and getting deeper by the second. It’s been a good few weeks since he last got drunk and gods know he’s ready to do it again. But then he looks up and he accidentally catches her eye. 

She doesn’t say anything; doesn’t need to. He takes the seat beside her. 

She’s let her hair down since the morning. When she moves her head a curtain of red rustles in his direction and the smell of lemon reaches his nose.

“Snow’s starting to melt,” Tormund says around a mouthful of chicken. Not the table manners he imagines Lady Stark is used to.

“ Maester Dargood says the seasons are different now,” she says. “Winters don’t last more than a few months.”

Tormund snorts. “Maybe not  _ here _ . In the true north winters will never change.”

She smiles a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and he  looks away and shoves some bread in his mouth when she catches him looking.

“You must be looking forward to returning north of the wall, my lord. When you can, of course. In the meantime, we’re lucky to have you to tend to Castle Black.”

Sandor bites back a snort of his own. Still chirping like a little bird. All the right words and not an ounce of meaning to any of it.

In so many ways she’s exactly what he always thought she might be. Sitting at the head of the table, cloaked in white furs, a queen in the way she carries herself if not her title.

But in another way that he can’t quite put his finger on, there’s something missing. Like she’s just a portrait of a queen, hung on the wall, to be looked at from a distance. Up close, close enough to smell her, close enough to reach out and touch her if he had the balls, he thinks he can see cracks.

“And do you intend to stay long in the north, my lord?”

It takes him a moment to realize she’s talking to him.

“Are you going to keep calling me ‘my lord’ the whole fucking time I’m here, girl?” He snaps. He expects her to flinch or blush or recoil in disgust like she used to. 

Instead, she just laughs and says again, without the title, “Do you intend to stay long in the north?”

He wants to glare at her, but it feels too childish. “Don’t know.”

He hasn’t really thought about it, didn’t think it mattered until now. Sandor shoves more food in his mouth before she can ask him to elaborate.

“If you keep eating like that, you won’t be staying at my castle for long, I’ll tell you that Hound,” Tormund chuckles. “Food’s scarce enough in the Crow’s nest without you eating me out of house and home.”

“Where’s your sister?” He asks, taking a long swig of wine to wash down the bread he’s shoved too readily into his mouth.

“Arya’s gone south, to spend some time in King’s Landing with His Grace.” She laughs a laugh that doesn’t sound happy and reminds him far too much of Cersei. “Though, I’m not sure anyone ever quite knows exactly where my sister is. For all I know she’s in Essos by now.”

“Always was a feral little wolf pup, that one.”

“Not so much of a pup these days,” Sansa says, not laughing now.

“Not many pups left after the Great War,” Tormund says. 

Sandor takes in the curve of her hips and the swell of her breast just visible under her cloak, but it’s the steel in her eyes more than anything that tells him the other man is right about that.

He forgoes breakfast in favor of downing half a skin of  Dornish red.

Stepping out onto the battlements, he’s met with the familiar ring of steel on steel. Down in the training yard two dark haired northern children of no more than twelve are sparring with one another. A cloud of silken black hair billows out behind one of them in a breeze and when the child spins, Sandor is surprised to see it’s a girl.

There are footsteps behind him and an already familiar smell washes over him.

“So shy on decent soldiers in the North you’re teaching the lasses to fight now?”

A loose strand of red brushes over his shoulder as she takes a place beside him. “Do you think women can’t make decent soldiers, my lord?”

He glances at her sidelong but doesn’t rise to the bait. They both know full well it was Brienne the Beauty who came closer to doing for him than anyone else ever had. Except Gregor.

“I thought I told you last night to fuck all your ‘ sers ’ and ‘my lords’.”

He thinks she’ll try and make some of her ladylike small talk and he’ll have to tell her to fuck off, but to his surprise she stays quiet. For what feels like an age, they stand in silence watching the children spar in the courtyard below.

“That one looks just like your sister did when she was learning to hold a sword.” He nods at the girl in the training yard who’s just been knocked in the mud, a sullen scowl plastered across her face. “Angry and fucking useless.”

“Most people aren’t born knowing how to kill a man in one blow. They have to learn.”

“Did you learn?”

“How to kill a man?” she asks, and the ice in her voice makes his jaw clench. “Eventually.”

“How to fight,” he corrects, wanting and at the same time not wanting to ask just how she learned the other lesson.

She tucks an escaped strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m the Lady of Winterfell. I have men who fight for me.”

“I’d bet your sister doesn’t think much of that. Bet your father wouldn’t have, either.”

Her eyes flick back to him. He’s staring at her, as usual – hasn’t really stopped since he walked through the doors to the great hall. For a second he thinks he sees the briefest hint of a smile play over the corners of her mouth.

“Perhaps you’ll have to teach me.” She seems like she’s toying with him and he doesn’t like it.

“Get your pretty little Ser  Edric to teach you.” He’s seen the Winterfell master at arms around the place. Just the type of sweet knight he knows the little bird always hoped Joffrey would be. “He seems like he’d be good at play fighting.”

“Is that what you think I want you to teach me?” She asks, with a sparkle in her eye that confirms that she’s playing with him, the way a wolf might play with wounded prey. “Play fighting?”

He scowls back. “I’ve got no bloody idea what you want, except to annoy the seven hells out of me with all your talk.”

His little bird would’ve flinched but, as he should’ve come to expect by now, this woman just looks at him.

“I’ll see you at dinner, my lord,” she says, dipping into a slight curtsey. Her white furs brush the ground, coming away streaked with mud.

He and Tormund are amidst a band of wildlings drinking in the great hall when she emerges in the doorway. She doesn’t say anything, but the grim look she gives Tormund says volumes and a few seconds later he’s rising from the table and following her out.

They don’t reappear until the cooks are laying food on the table for the evening meal. Both of their faces are darker than when they went in, lips drawn, eyes narrowed.

He’s halfway through a bowl of stew with an unidentifiable meat in it when the wildling drops onto the seat beside him with a grunt, broth slopping over the edges of the bowl he slams down on the table.

He doesn’t bother to acknowledge the other man: doesn’t much care to know about what the Lady of Winterfell and the Lord at the Wall have been getting up to in her chambers all day, but Tormund doesn’t wait for him to ask before launching into a tirade.

“I’m sick to death of these fucking southern cunts. A few fucking raids on  Karhold and the  Dreadfort and they all come crying to their fucking mammy, expecting her to do something about it. Expecting  _ me _ to do something about it. As if I have any control over what the free folk do.”

He takes his time to finish his mouthful before responding. “Don’t you?” 

Snow made Tormund Lord at the Wall. A made-up title, that was meant to give him some semblance of control over the wildlings, even though both Jon and Tormund had seemed to know from the start that it wouldn’t do anything of the sort.

“Those that follow me, aye, but not all of them do. They’re free folk. I can’t make them do anything, let alone stop raiding castles where piss weak lords sit around hoarding their food and getting fat while my people starve to death. If you ask me, it’s good for the little boy lords to be kept on their toes.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Sandor replies around his mouthful of stew. "Matter of fact, I’m not even sure why you’re still talking.”

Tormund guffaws and downs his cup of wine in one. “Trust you to keep a Lord humble.”

He finishes his own wine and sits back to survey the room. A group of wildlings is sat with a group of Stark men playing dice over their dinners. A  septa sits between two young girls, both with the dark brown hair and pale skin of the north. Sansa sits with her  Maester and the Master at Arms, heads bent, deep in conversation.

As if she can feel his eyes on her, she looks up suddenly and catches his gaze before he can pretend not to have been staring. Not that there’s much point in that anymore: just like she did last time, she holds his gaze longer than she should, and again, he wonders what she wants from him. She’s a strange girl, this newer, bolder Sansa Stark. Strange and terrible.

He spends the rest of the evening pointedly not looking at her and he’s relieved when she doesn’t show any further interest in him either.

But when he’s too deep in his cups for comfort and stumbles to the door to make a tactical exit, she’s there too, far less drunk but beating her own  retreat nonetheless. 

Clumsily, he holds the door open for her to allow her through. The way her hips sway as she walks away, he thinks he might stand there a while longer watching, but she stops and turns, ruining the view.

He clears his throat. Steps through the door.

“Do you think you’ll escort me to my room, ser, or walk five feet behind me the entire way?” Her voice is tinged with laughter, and he wonders if she hasn’t had a little more wine than he thought.

“Scared of the dark, little bird?” He asks mockingly, even though he’s becoming aware all too quickly that this girl isn’t afraid of anything.

Sansa doesn’t rise to the bait, waiting for him to catch up to her. He doesn’t proffer his arm and she doesn’t look to take it, but they settle in beside one another more comfortably than he wants.

“How have you enjoyed your first few nights in the north?”

“I’ve been north before, girl.”

“It’s a different place than it was when you were last here. Warmer.”

He glances sidelong at her. “Not everything’s warmer.”

“No army of the dead, at least,” she says  softly and he does laugh at that.

“Aye, that’s an improvement.”

“Just armies of northern lords marching to Winterfell to ask me for things I can’t give them.” Her voice is grim again all too quickly, her lips drawn into a thin line.

He doesn’t want to ask, but the wine has loosened his tongue and he can’t help himself. “Aye, and what’s that?”

She sighs. “The Umbers want the Wildlings sent north. The Wildlings want better lands to the South. The  Karstarks want the Wildlings executed and for me to keep apologising for what Robb did to their grandfather. And if that’s not enough, the Cerwyns want me to marry Cley Cerwyn and give them a Lord of the North.”

He snorts, even though the mention of her marrying the  Cerwyn boy has made a feeling spark in his chest that it takes a second for him to  recognise and another second for him to squash as absurd: jealousy.

“Why not just marry him then, if they’re so worried about it,” he says, to prove to himself how unconcerned he is by the idea.

“I won’t be marrying again,” she says, and although her voice is soft, the words are not.

He doesn’t have anything to say that isn’t foolish murmurings of relief, so he says nothing.

To his surprise, she carries on without being asked. “The Northmen want a lord in the North, and they want it to be one of their own. They’re worried if I wait too long, the Queen will marry me off to some  Southryn lord without my having a say in it.”

They’re probably right. He looks at her and she knows it too.

“She wants to marry me to Ser Jorah. Jon’s told me. He said he wouldn’t allow it, but who knows how long that will last. She does seem to have a way of getting the things she wants.”

Sandor snorts. “Women always do.”

She looks at him. He looks back and he’s painfully aware of how close she is to him.

“And what do you want, Sandor?”

Some answers flash through his mind that he can’t say. Not to her. Instead he says, “Wine and women. And a good night’s sleep now and again.”

They’re outside her room, but she stops and doesn’t go in. She takes him in slowly and thoughtfully.  ”You’re different.”

She’s one to talk. The fearsome Lady bitch of the North thinks  _ he’s  _ different?

“I’ve always liked wine and women, girl.”

A smile tugs at the corners of her lips. Maybe the first genuine smile he’s seen from her in all the time he’s known her. “Good night, my lord. Sleep well.”

The Glovers arrive just after the sun’s risen the next morning. He can see Sansa standing on the battlements, watching them approach like an archer marking her targets. When he looks up again, she’s disappeared.

He doesn’t see her for the rest of the day, but he sees each of the  lords trickle in one by one. With each new arrival the mood grows more agitated, until it’s reached a near frenzy by early afternoon.

The feast that evening is ten times more elaborate than the one they had when he arrived, the Great Hall packed to bursting with bannermen from every major house in the North.

With all the northern lords present, he’s seated at one of the lower tables and pleased about it. She’s tucked between the Umber boy whose name he can’t remember and  Cley Cerwyn . From his seat opposite them, he can just hear the  Cerwyn lad’s attempts at making conversation with her.

_ You look beautiful. Thank you. Where’s your sister? South. How’s the King? Busy. _

It’s painful to listen to and he wishes he had something to distract  him, but seated beside a morose Mormont man and one of Sansa’s ladies who tried and failed to engage him in idle chatter, he can’t help but overhear.

Then the Umber boy  says “was that the Hound sparring with your master at arms today?” and her eyes flick to where he’s seated at the lower table.

“Yes,” she says back. She’s still looking at him and he looks away, because he hasn’t worked out yet what to do with her staring like that.

“Why is he in the North?”

“I’m not quite sure, but I hope to find out.”

None of their new arrivals are to be found the next morning and the doors to the great hall have been pulled shut, suggesting that might be where all the action is. He sidles into the hall through one of the rear doors behind Sansa, taking up a space just to the left of where she’s seated, next to one of the household guards.

She’s at the head of the room, all her lords and ladies gathered around. There’s already a number of voices shouting over one another to be heard.

“My lady, it would be better for everyone if the wildlings returned north. That’s their home, I’m sure they’d be happier there too.” The Umber boy couldn’t be more than 10, but he sounds surprisingly sure of himself despite that. The benefit of being raised to be a lord by a good Maester, he supposes.

Tormund scowls. “You think we like living here with all of you lot? We’d go north if we could, but everything’s fucking dead.”

“The same as it was in Last Hearth and Long Lake, and everywhere south of the wall that the Night King came through. But we rebuilt our lands and replanted our crops and now what little we have managed to restore,  you cunts come and steal in the night!” Rickard Umber isn’t as mild mannered as his nephew. Spittle flies from his mouth as he speaks.

Tormund pointed the Lord Umber’s cousin out last night as the main instigator of the troubles and with that outburst, Sandor doesn’t doubt it.

“We’re all aware of what happened as the army of the dead came south,” Sansa says, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice. “Life will return, but that takes time, as you well know, Rickard Umber. Or have you forgotten the food and supplies that the Crown supplied to Last Hearth when your lands were dead and your stores empty?”

Umber  scowls, but shakes his head. “No, my lady.”

Sansa continues frostily. “Life will return north of the Wall too, and when that happens, any of the free folk that wish to return will be able to do so. In the meantime, we must learn to live together.”

“Don’t tell that to us,” the  Karstark girl snaps. “Tell it to the Wildlings. They’re the ones killing people in our villages, stealing from our grain stores, ravaging any crops that can grow.”

“There can be no peace until they’re under control.”

“They must be sent north, my lady, food or none.” 

Tormund slams his hand on the bench where he’s seated. “If we go north, we die.”

“Good fucking riddance,” Rickard Umber spits, and Tormund is across the room and on top of him in seconds.

The wildling gets in a few good punches before the men on either side yank him off, amidst shouting and screaming from both sides of the room.

“That’s enough,” Sansa says. Her voice isn’t  loud but her tone is so chilling that everyone in the room stops, even Tormund with his hair springing loose and Umber who’s so red in the face he looks fit to burst. “If you can’t control yourselves, you can leave. I won’t have my father's halls so disrespected.”

Ser Rickard’s face twists into a mask of rage. “Your father would be ashamed if he could see what’s become of the north under your rule.” He spits on the ground.

Sandor’s hand is on his sword hilt before the spit hits the ground. He steps up beside Sansa without thinking, drawing the sword just enough that the ring of steel echoes through the deathly silent room. 

Every eye  snaps to him, but he keeps his gaze locked on the Umber, half hoping the man will do something to justify him using his sword.

After a moment, he feels a gentle hand on his forearm. He’s sure the shock must show on his face when he glances to her, and he can see it on the faces of others in the room too. She shouldn’t be touching him at all, let alone like that. That’s not how people command their guards.

Her eyes aren’t angry as she pushes his hand to re-sheath his sword; just sure of herself. Confident that she doesn’t need his protection but, if he’s not mistaken, not unhappy that he offered it.

He sheathes his sword and steps back, but he doesn’t take his hand off it, keeping his eyes on the Umbers. They, in turn, don’t take their eyes off him.

Sansa doesn’t stand. She barely even moves, but her voice when she speaks is crisp and unshaken.

“You are too quick to forget, Ser Rickard. The Night’s Watch killed my brother for allowing the wildings south of the Wall. But without the wildlings, the army of the dead would have killed each and every one of us and there would be no lands or food to squabble over. The North remembers  that and you would all do well to remember it too, before you’re so hasty to call for their execution.

“We will do everything we can to stop the raids and bring peace to the North. I will write to the Crown to request further aid from the  Reach, and will send extra men to each of your garrisons to man your keeps, if you so require. But make no mistake, I will not forsake the people who fought beside us and helped to save all your lives. And I will have no further discussion on the point.”

And there is no further discussion on the point. 

Still, Sandor doesn’t move away, or take his hand off his sword, until she’s risen and left the room some hours later.

The next time he sees her she’s walking with her hand gently resting on  Cley Cerwyn’s arm. The lad says  something and she laughs a gentle laugh, looking at him in a way that he knows. It’s the way Cersei used to look at men. Devotion and awe over well veiled indifference. The kind of look that tricks foolish men into falling in love with a beautiful woman.

He doesn’t like seeing that look on her. 

He’s walking with Tormund back to the hall and she stops as they pass by each other.

“My lady.” Tormund inclines his head.

“Good morning my lords.” Even her head nod is regal. It’s all just a show for the  Cerwyn boy, but he hates watching it. “Will you join us? We were going to take a turn around the Keep, and your company would be most welcome.”

“Certainly,” the wildling says with a grin.

“No,” he says, at the same time.

Sansa looks between them with a frown.

“Don’t come then, Hound,” Tormund says, offering his other arm to Sansa, and she takes it slightly uncomfortably “I’m sure the Lady Stark would prefer to be accompanied by  northmen more than the likes of you anyway.”

“Get fucked,” he says, because anything else just seems like he’s giving the wildling what he wants.

Tormund chuckles as the three of them walk away.

He finds Sandor after the walk, downing a fresh skin of  arbour gold in the great hall with some of the other wildlings.

“She’s a clever one, that girl,” Tormund says after he’s fetched himself a cup.

“How’s that?”

“Sneaky. She asks me about life in the north before the wall came down, so I start to tell her about it and the  Cerwyn boy chimes in with questions and before I know it, the boy and I are chatting like old friends. I don’t even know how it happened but somewhere along the way she gets us to agree that it would be good for me to visit Castle  Cerwyn .”

“ _ You’re _ going to Castle  Cerwyn ?”

“Aye.” The wildling sounds as bewildered by it as he is. “She’s persuasive. Almost made me think it was my idea.”

“Guess the little bird got some political sense forced into her after all these years.”

“More than some, I’d say.” Tormund downs the rest of his cup of wine and waves over one of the serving girls for another. “If the  Cerwyn boy doesn’t marry her, maybe I will.”

“She says she won’t marry anyone,” he says, before he thinks it through.

Tormund snorts. “With a face like that, that’s probably what all the maids say to you, isn’t it  Hound?“

The lords begin their departures the following day. With each host that rides out of sight across the field, he can almost visibly see her relax.

But with their departures comes a reminder that Tormund’s reason for staying in Winterfell is gone, and his with it.

As if she’s realises it too, Sansa appears by his side as he walks through the courtyard in the early evening.

“Will you stay long in the North, my lord?”

He looks at his boot prints in the melting snow. They leave gigantic imprints in the muddy ground underfoot. Hers are small and delicate by comparison, just like how she used to be. Before she became the hard edges and cold lines he sees now.

He doesn’t miss the delicate, naïve child from King’s Landing, but he wonders if she might. Miss what she might’ve been if it hadn’t been for Joffrey, or the even worse one he hears came along afterwards.

“Maybe. Nowhere else to be,” he says, and their eyes meet briefly, icy blue on tired grey.

“What about Clegane Keep? You’re Lord Clegane now, it’s yours by right.”

“And you’re Lady Stark. How does that title serve to ward off the nightmares that linger in Winterfell?”

They stare at each other in silence for a long time. She knows as well as he does that he’s not going to Clegane Keep. Can’t think of a single place in the whole of the seven kingdoms he’d want to be less.

They’ve stopped walking. When he realises he starts up again, trying to put a bit of distance between them.

He doesn’t know what to do with this new Sansa Stark who is gentle and sharp and warm and cold all at the same time.  Who's clothes cling to her body in the way that they didn’t when she was 13, giving him a daily reminder that this isn’t the child he knew in King’s Landing.

“Will you go to Castle Black?”

The question stops him, only because he doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Where else would I go?”

“You could stay here.” Her brisk steps bring her back up beside him in a rush of cool air and the faint smell of lemon.

While the rest of the north slowly defrosts around them, Sandor feels his words freezing up in his throat. He looks at her face, pale skin with the finest dusting of freckles, wisps of red hair escaping to brush flushed cheeks. Had she always been as beautiful as she was now? If she had been he couldn’t remember it.

“Perhaps,” he says. He turns and walks away and neither of them speak another word, but they don’t need to. They both know that if he was going to say no, he would’ve done it.

Tormund tells him they’re leaving the next day.

He doesn’t really seem surprised when Sandor says he isn’t coming.

“I’ll follow in a few weeks,” he says, but they look at each other and he thinks they might both expect that’s not true.

“So long as you know what you’re getting yourself into, my friend,” the wildling says and claps him on the back.

He doesn’t. Has no idea what he’s getting himself into, although he has a good feeling it’s a world of trouble.


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa glances at the tree. “There are no gods; just men and stronger men who kill them. You told me that. Do you remember?”
> 
> Sandor shakes his head, but it’s a lie. He remembers telling her any number of things like that in the red heat of King’s Landing. He had been a different person then, so intent on only seeing the cruelest parts of the world. 
> 
> He sees those parts still but sometimes, like here looking at her now, he sees more. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains sexual content.

> _ My wounds don't feel _
> 
> _ like wounds in your hands. _
> 
> _ They feel like beginnings _
> 
> _ - _ Pavana Reddy

* * *

He never so much tells her he’s staying, as simply doesn’t leave. 

They move him out of the guest quarters and into a permanent room, which is even closer to hers than he was before. He helps the master at arms train the young lads, spends time with the men at the forge, drinks with the guardsmen.

Every so often finds himself standing on the ramparts with her there too, side by side watching life move by them. Some days she stands so close her arm brushes his and she fills the crisp air with talk of one thing or another. Some days, the cold seems to overtake  her and she stands a little apart, wrapped in furs and silent but seemingly in need of the company.

His days begin to settle into a routine that he doesn’t entirely mislike.

Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t see it coming when the assassin comes. 

He’s down in the barracks watching the guards play dice, miles away from where she’s tucked away in her room, pouring over her usual stacks of papers. It was her lovely Ser Edric and one of his squires who heard her scream and came running. 

He doesn’t even hear about it until one of the men comes barreling into the room, yelling for all of them to make for the castle immediately. He doesn’t have to be asked twice. 

By the time he gets to her after running so hard his lungs burn and his legs ache, she’s already wrapped in blankets in the corner of her room, the Maester cleaning out the cut on her cheek.

She looks at him when he enters. There’s blood smeared down her face and it takes him a few moments to  realise it’s not hers.

“I’m alright,” she says, even though he didn’t ask, and it’s only after she says it that he realises his hands are shaking.

“Where is he?” He asks, then roars it again when there’s no answer. “Where is he?!”

Edric nods to the bloody heap on the floor. Sandor flips him over and blank eyes stare up at him. There’s a gaping wound in his chest where someone, he suspects Edric,  shoved a sword through the back of him.

It’s the worst thing they could’ve done; now there’ll be no chance to question him, no chance to try and work out who sent him. He’s of half a mind to go and slam the boy into the nearest wall and try to knock some sense into him. The only thing that stops him is the sight of her, already shaken and likely to get worse if they two of them start fighting.

Instead, with a tenuous hold on his temper, he grits out, “Why did you kill him?”

“He was trying to kill Lady Sansa,” Edric says, like it’s obvious.

“You don’t think questioning him to find out who the fuck sent him might have been a good idea?”

“He was on top of her with a knife when I got here,” the other man replies tightly, “So no, I didn’t stop to ask questions.”

Sandor shakes his head in frustration and bends to pick up the body. Her voice stops him.

“Stay.” She clears her throat, as if uncomfortable that she’s let the words out but unwilling to turn back now. “Please?”

He pauses. “We should get this body out of here. Someone needs to clean up the blood or you won't get it off the floor.”

“Someone else can do it,” she says, her voice smaller than he’s used to. “You stay here.”

He nods without needing to be asked again and he’s glad, in that moment, that he isn’t someone who cares about the opinions of others, or he’d be withering under the looks that the Maester Dargood and Ser Edric are both giving him.

Edric clears his throat, clearly unhappy with the turn things have taken, but with too much respect for his lady to say as much. “I’ll have extra guards posted on your watch, my lady. There’ll be someone outside your door at all times.” 

The young man beckons one of his men in and together they carry the body away.

“You can leave us as well,  Dargood ,” she says, not unkindly.

“You need tending my lady. I should  examine you for other injuries.”

She rests a gentle hand on the older man’s forearm. “I’m fine. I just need to be alone for a while, to rest.”

After a moment and a final uncertain glance at Sandor, the Maester nods and leaves the room. 

Sandor ducks his head, eyes on the ground, moving to follow the Maester out. “I’ll be just outside your door if anything happens.”

“Are you not staying?”

He pauses. “You said you wanted to be alone.”

“Not from you,” she says as though that was obvious, and his chest constricts in a way he doesn’t recognise. “Will you sit with me? Just for a while.”

He can only imagine what the look on his face is like, but she lies down on the bed and makes space for him and he doesn’t know what to do but sit down. There’s a cut on her neck that’s oozing a slow trickle of blood, dribbling over her white skin and onto the pillow underneath her. She doesn’t even seem to notice, but he can’t take his eyes off it; rage welling up in him as he thinks about it. About how close the man must have gotten to leave that mark.

“Who was that?” He asks, trying and failing to keep his tone level.

“Not sure,” she says, in a tone that’s far too distant for someone who’s almost just been killed. “He almost did what he came for, though.”

He stares at the ground, unable to look at her and the blood on her throat for fear he’ll snap. “That won’t happen again.”

“You can’t know that.” Her voice is faraway. When he does risk a glance at her, her eyelids are drooping, head nestled into the crook of her elbow.

But he does know it, because he won’t let it happen again.

“I’m so tired, I feel like I haven’t slept in years.” She yawns. “You won’t  leave will you?”

He shakes his head, looks down, wonders why she says things like this to him. Why she touches his arm and asks him to stay in Winterfell and to sit with her in her room. Was it for moments like this, so she had someone meaner and uglier than other men around, to fight off danger for her?

“You should get some rest,” he says stiffly, but it turns out he doesn’t need to bother. When he glances at Sansa again, her eyes have closed and she’s already fast asleep.

She can’t have been lying about being tired, because she sleeps through the evening and well into the early hours of the morning without stirring.

He covers her with the blankets and goes to stand by the door eventually, too aware of how horrified she’ll be in the cold light of dawn to think of him sitting on her bed while she sleeps. He supposes he should be tired, but the idea of sleep seems ridiculous to him. He couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to,  knowing what’s almost happened to her.

He keeps himself moving around the room to avoid the fatigue that starts to creep in around dawn and give himself something to do that doesn’t involve staring at her sleeping form. Finally, as the sun climbs through the windows, he finds a comfortable corner by the window to settle into and consider dozing off.

That plan dies a quick death when Sansa stirs, waking abruptly and sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes darting around the room looking for something and becoming more panicked when they don’t seem to find it.

“Sandor?” she asks, and he can’t fight down the shock that it's him she’s looking for. There’s something else too; something that isn’t shock and starts lower in his stomach, at the idea of the first words out of her mouth when she wakes being his name. 

He hates himself immediately for thinking it, for enjoying the result of the fear she feels after the events of the previous night.

“Here, girl,” he says, voice gruff from lack of sleep.

She turns to look at him, exhaling in what he could only describe as relief. 

“I thought you left,” she says, the tone in her voice not one he quite  understands .

“I said I would stay, didn’t I?” he asks, voice even colder now to try and push down any other, entirely ridiculous ideas that are starting to creep into his head. He can’t handle this; needs to get out of this room. 

Ideally, she seems to  realise in that moment that she’s alone with him in her room and only half-dressed. She pulls the blankets slightly tighter to her chest. It’s a small movement, but he sees it and looks away immediately. He knew he was a fucking idiot for even entertaining the ideas flitting through his mind just before.

“Can you have my ladies sent in?” she asks.

He nods and leaves without another word.

He goes to his room and makes a feeble attempt to sleep, but it’s barely been an hour before the worry of what might be happening to her without him there overwhelms his thoughts entirely. He has to accept then he won’t be getting anymore sleep that day.

She’s nowhere to be found when he rises reluctantly from his warm bed and goes to break his fast.

“Gone to the godswood, my lord,” one of the guards tells him when he asks.

He follows her out there, even though it’s snowing and he doesn’t know what he’s trying to find.

She’s sitting beneath a branch of the twisted  weirwood , staring at nothing. Guards are stationed well back in the trees, far enough away that he can almost pretend they aren’t there.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” he tells her. “It’s not safe.”

Her eyes slide onto him slowly, like she knew he was there all along. “It’s as safe here as anywhere else,” she says, which he supposes means it’s not safe at all.

She doesn’t seem intent on saying much else, and he can’t handle the silence today, so he says “Still praying to your gods then?”

Sansa glances at the tree. “There are no gods; just men and stronger men who kill them.”

It strikes him again how different she is. Like one by one, these men have broken down the old Sansa into little pieces and built her back up into something that looks the same but isn’t.

“You told me that. Do you remember?” She rises to her feet, stepping towards him. “You were right.”

Sandor shakes his head, but it’s a lie. He remembers telling her any number of things like that in the red heat of King’s Landing. He had been a different person then, so intent on only seeing the cruelest parts of the world. 

He sees those parts still but sometimes, like here looking at her now, he sees more.

“It turns out you’ve been right about a great many things.” She’s still a few feet away, but he can feel her presence like a weight on him.

“I wish I hadn’t been.” The words sound gruffer than he means them to, but he doesn’t think he’s ever meant something more. He wishes the world had been better to her. That Joffrey and the Bolton bastard and Littlefinger had never got their teeth into her and ripped his little bird to shreds. That he had done more to shield her from all the cruelty. 

The words slip out of his mouth before he can stop them. Perhaps he wouldn’t have wanted to stop them anyway. “I should’ve protected you.”

She shakes her head, a sad smile tugging at her mouth. “No one can really protect anyone from this world.”

He shakes his head right back, staring deep into her blue eyes. 

Just like his journey into the  Godswood , he doesn’t know what he’s hoping to find. Some spark of hope perhaps? A sign that she doesn’t mean what she says, because it’s not true: he could protect her.

He’s old, and years too late. So much damage already done, but they’re both here now and it’s all he has to offer her.

Sandor kneels in the ankle-deep snow. It’s cold and wet through his trousers but he barely notices. The ring of steel echoes through the empty wood as he draws his sword and lays it on the ground in front of her.

“I don’t know the bloody knights’ vows, but my sword and my life  is yours, if you’ll have me. I’ll die before I let anyone hurt you again. I swear it to you, and if any of the damn gods are  listening I swear it to them, too.”

He doesn’t want to look up now. Afraid he might see disapproval in her eyes. He couldn’t blame her if she didn’t want him. Gods knew he had enough chances to protect her in King’s Landing and failed miserably. Why should she trust him now?

He forces himself to raise his eyes back to hers. Despite the snow, the breeze catches her hair and whips it around her face like flames, dancing through the ice. He’s transfixed by her, just like he is every time he looks.

“Stand, my lord” she says softly. “This is the part where I offer you a place at my hearth… Do you want that?”

He swallows. Nods. “Aye.”

A smile flickers over her lips, pink and fleeting and gone just as quickly as it appears.

“I got married here,” she says. It’s not what he’s expecting. “Right where I’m standing now, Theon Greyjoy gave me to Ramsay Bolton. I hadn’t expected that I would want another man making vows to me under this same tree.”

His heart seems to beat off rhythm at that.

“You know I don’t need to be protected?” She asks him. “Not really.”

He takes a slow breath. He knows alright, but he wants to do it anyway. He can’t find the words to explain it to her, though.

Somehow, she seems to know it without him needing to say it, gently proffering her arm to be taken back to the keep.

Everything is different after that.

With a grimace and grudging acceptance, Edric shuffles around the guards’ duties to account for the fact that he’s now constantly by her side.  More often than not he’s the only one with her as she walks down the chilly stone  corridors, or takes meals in her room by candlelight as she pours over scrolls.

It’s not like it used to be, though, when he used to guard the Queen, or Joffrey after that. 

She looks at him a lot. Speaks to him more than he’s come to expect, which is likely just a sign there isn’t enough good company around the castle, but much to his surprise he likes it anyway.

“What was it like seeing the Queen’s dragon’s fight in the war?” she asks one day, as she’s eating her morning meal.  _ Terrifying _ .

The next, as she sips a cup of wine while reading through letters from Oldtown, it’s “is it nice in the Westerlands?”  _ Probably nicer now that Gregor’s dead. _

“Do you think you’ll marry?”  _ Never thought much about it... _

Most of the time she still reminds him of Cersei more than he’d like. Her eyes take everything in quickly and coldly and with a calculating grimace. She’s beautiful, but in the chilliest way he could’ve imagined.

But then sometimes, if he catches her at just the right moment, the way she looks at him reminds him not of the girl she was back in King’s Landing, but of the girl she might have been if things would’ve been different. If Joffrey hadn’t taken his time meticulously destroying her expectations of men. When her eyes are bright, and her cheeks are flushed, and a smile plays lightly over her lips, just teasing at the edges.

Late at night, when he’s alone in his chambers, he wonders what he’d have to do to get that smile to stretch the whole way across her mouth. He lets himself slip down that rabbit hole for a while, mind drawing the curves of her body from what he’s glimpsed under her dress.

The fantasies only last a minute, though, before he remembers that men like him don’t make women like her smile. Before he  realises she’d be disgusted if she knew he was stroking himself while thinking of her. 

He used to think women like Sansa Stark were made for men like Loras Tyrell and Jaime Lannister, not men like him. These days, when he sees her standing on the ramparts with the wind whipping through her hair, he  realises Lady Stark was made for herself. Not him, or the  Kingslayer , or anyone else for that matter.

Just her.

He’s standing guard outside her room one night the first time it happens. He knows later it’s the first time because the next day he reports it to Ser Edric and the knight just looks at him like it’s the strangest thing he’s ever heard.

It’s late and dark, and he’s let himself down into a seated position on the ground, head lolling against the cold stone wall. Her door creaks open and she’s standing there in a nightgown.

He climbs back to his feet, trying to look grudging so he doesn’t look caught off-guard.

“I wanted water,” she says. The gown is thin. So thin he can see the moonlight shining through her window through the fabric. So thin he can see parts of her he needs to not see if he’s going to retain his sanity.

“You’ve got water,” he says gruffly. He wants her to go back inside so he doesn’t have to focus so hard on not looking at her. Instead he’s fixed his gaze on a spot just over her shoulder.

She smiles apologetically. “I spilled it.”

Her hand proffers the empty jug.

“I’ll get more.” He moves to take it and she pulls back slightly, not letting him.

“I’ll come,” she says, stepping out into the hall. “I can’t sleep.”

Her feet are only clad in delicate fur slippers. He can see the curve of her thighs through the fabric of her gown. Probably more if he cared to look. He looks down at the ground.

“Fine.” He starts walking to put some space between her body and his mind. Soft pattering feet race to catch up with him.

They walk in silence for a few feet, and then he feels her hand slip through the crook of his elbow. Fingertips, warm and gentle, brush his forearm. There’s a jolt in his gut, and it’s all he can do not to shake her off.

He looks at her. She’s looking back, with a look in her eyes like there’s nothing strange at all about her touching him. Perhaps for her it’s not strange. Most of her life she's being escorted around the castle by lords and knights and men at arms. Perhaps she’s so used to men offering their arms to her she doesn’t even think about it, even when it is the Hound.

He reminds himself of that  over and over again as they walk, when her fingers feel like they’re leaving burn marks on his skin as they move with each step. When his mind begins to wonder what that hand might feel like on other parts of him and he feels a feeling that’s too low to be in his stomach this time. Seven hells, he hates that he turns into some ridiculous green boy around her.

He ignores it all the way to the kitchen. 

On the way back, he’s silently glad her hands are full  with the water jug and she  has to stop touching him.

She does it again another night he’s standing guard outside.

“I can’t sleep,” she says, and if it’s possible he swears she has even less clothing on this time. “Will you take me for a walk?”

He should say no, but he doesn’t want to. Her hair is tied up in a ribbon, loose strands spilling over her shoulder. He can smell her from where he’s standing. If there was a man in the Seven Kingdoms who could say no to that, he’d be a Septon or a fool. More likely a fool.

“Come on,” he says. He offers his arm without her needing to make him this time. Her fingertips light on him again, and he tries to commit the feeling to memory, for the moment she thinks better of it and stops touching him.

“You should be trying to sleep,” he tells her gruffly, like he’s her bloody wet nurse.

“I will, once we’ve been for a walk.” He swears he can feel her fingers tracing tiny circles on his arm. “I thought you’d be glad of the company. It must be lonely standing outside by yourself.”

“I’m a sworn sword, not one of your ladies. I’m not here to keep you company.”

“Lucky I’m the one keeping you company, then.” She’s smiling to herself when she says it.

The silence between them is heavy, and he breaks it for want of something better to do.

“You must get no sleep if you’re always out here taking your pet guards for walks.”

She gives him a strange look. “I don’t walk with the others.”

When they get back to her room, she lingers in the doorway before going inside. The way he imagines a maid might do with a handsome knight who escorted her home. Like she’s waiting for something.

But she’s not a maid and he’s not a knight, and he doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. So he just turns around and faces back out to the other wall, to avoid trying to work out what Sansa Stark expects from him.

Eventually, he hears the door close behind him.

“Have you eaten?” she asks one night, while he’s standing by the fire as she writes a letter to the Red Keep.

It’s such an odd question that he doesn’t answer for a while, until she glances up from her papers to fix her blue gaze on him.

“Not yet?” It’s more of a question than an answer. Why would she care? He wants to laugh at the thought of Joffrey or Cersei having asked him that when he was standing guard over them.

“I’ll have them bring something up for you. You can eat with me.”

He frowns at her. She sees  it but ignores him.

“Seven hells, you are bloody lonely. Maybe you need a husband more than you think.”

But she has the servants bring him food anyway, and he sits down without any real protest. He’s all bark and no bite these days.

“Are you planning to sleep  tonight or stay up all night reading those letters like you usually do?” he asks her around a mouthful of bread.

She takes a slow sip of wine. “If I didn’t know  better I’d think you were worried about me.”

He just looks at her. He is worried about her and they both know it. There doesn’t even seem a point in denying it, like she’s probably expecting him to.

“Didn’t swear my sword to you to have you reading yourself to death.”

Her lips curve into a small smile. Wine has stained them ever so slightly red.

His mind flicks back to the whore he visited the week before. A plump red headed woman, who wore a jarring red paint on her lips. It had grated on him so much he’d fucked her from behind just to avoid looking at her face. Leastways he told himself that was why, and not because then all he could see was a cloud of red hair spilling over her shoulders.

He tears his mind away from that, clearing his throat as if she might know what he’s thinking about. Sandor takes a long drink of his wine.

“Why  _ did  _ you swear your sword to me, then?” There’s a teasing in her eyes that he doesn’t like.

“You know why,” he grunts and roughly shoves more food into his mouth.

A foot brushes his leg under the table and he almost  jumps out of his seat. It lingers just long enough that he thinks it wasn’t an accident, and then it’s gone.

His eyes flick to hers. She’s looking at him with that look that makes a regular appearance in his  late-night imaginings of her. The one where the icy layer has melted off her and he can see the woman peeking through.

The foot brushes him again, slower and more deliberately. He wants to tell her to stop, but he’s not enough of a masochist to do that. He just stares at her smile and some crazy part of him wants to smile back, if his face wasn’t so fucking ugly when he did.

“Meet me tomorrow morning?” she asks. Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. “I’ll be in the stables just after dawn. You’ll have to saddle Stranger, the stable boys value their hands too much to touch him.”

Sandor snorts. He should ask her what for, what’s happening at the stables, who else is coming.

But he doesn’t really care about any of that, so he just nods and mutters, “Fine.”

He finds her in the kitchen bright and early the next morning, fingers delving through baskets along one side of the room, searching for something. She’s bent over, skirt following the curve of her hip down to the ground.

She looks over her shoulder at him and a smile spreads over her face. It lights up her eyes in a way  he couldn’t have imagined several moons ago when he arrived in the north.

“The  maester says spring has come.” She stands up and hands him an apple. Warm fingers brush his and then they’re gone. “For Stranger. Come on.”

Her horse is already saddled. Stranger stands grumpily in the corner, stamping his feet and tossing his mane as the stableboys eye him, trying to decide whether they should try their luck. Sandor shifts the boys out of the way and takes his time fixing each buckle in place himself, feeling her eyes on him as he does it.

"Where's the rest of them?” He asks, not bothering to help her up onto her horse before climbing onto his own. The absence of her usual contingent of at least five somber, long haired northerners is striking.

“Don’t you think you can take care of me on your own?” Something dances through her eyes as a stable boy helps her onto her horse, and even though he knows he’s fucking sick for thinking it, one hundred thoughts race through his head at the unintentional double meaning in her words.

He can’t think on that one anymore; not with the green stableboys standing around staring at the two of them and looking about ready to piss themselves in excitement at getting near her.

“Let’s go.” His voice is stiffer than he’d like as he wheels Stranger around and trots out of the stable. She follows, accompanied by the light sound of laughter.

They trot along in silence for a while, through the gates and out into the  Wolfswood . It's unusually warm as the sun begins to creep over the tree line. All around them, the air is thick with the scent of earth and the world melting back to life. Leaves begin to unfurl on the trees.

It’s not the red heat of King’s Landing that he’s used to, but as he chances a sideways glance at her, he wonders if northern mornings weren’t made just for her. So that anyone who looked at her could see the  lines of her cheekbones and the ice in her eyes and the fire in her hair just like they were meant to be seen.

They stop after an hour or so of riding, at the foot of a hill that has purple flowers beginning to sprout on it.

“Lavendar,” she says, as if he asked or cares. Sansa climbs down off her horse and picks one of the stalks, lifting it to her nose and inhaling. “My mother used to love this.”

“Don’t tell me you made us ride all the way out here for some fucking flowers,” he grunts.

She shakes her head. “Not flowers. Food. I had one of the kitchen maids pack our morning meal for us.”

She turns back to her horse and begins to unpack things from the saddle bag and set them down on the ground, laying them out piece by piece in a neat arrangement. He supposes he’s meant to help but he just stares at her, confused.

When she’s  done she takes her cloak off her shoulders and spreads it on the ground, sitting down and looking up at him expectantly. “Will you eat, or just sit up there looking miserable?”

He pauses long enough to let her think he’s contemplating which option to choose, then climbs down grudgingly and takes a seat leaning against a nearby tree.

“You could’ve eaten at Winterfell.”

“I suppose so,” she says, not rising to the argument he’s trying to push her into. 

She picks up a berry between two fingers and slowly places it into her mouth. Her lips close around it and he shifts uncomfortably, looking away, too aware of the stirring in his groin. He’s as bad as those fucking stableboys. Worse, since he’s a grown man who shouldn’t get hard from watching a girl eating some fucking fruit.

“So why are we here?” He grunts out, not moving to take any of the food.

Sansa stops with another berry halfway to her lips and looks at him, head tilted slightly to the side, lips pursed. Then she puts the berry down and rises to her feet.

“Because I wanted to be able to do this” she says earnestly, clearing the distance between them to kneel down and kiss him.

Her lips are soft and warm and taste of something sweet. Her body is close enough to press against his arm.

He jerks away abruptly, drawing in a sharp breath and then another, and another still as he tries to get his racing pulse under control. Her lips aren’t on his anymore, but she’s still right there, hands cupping his cheeks, smooth and burnt side alike.

He stares at her, eyes narrowed, unsure of what to do. Unsure of what the fuck  _ she’s _ doing. Of whether he might be hallucinating this whole thing.

Perhaps she’s testing him to see if he’s the same as Littlefinger and the Bolton Bastard and all the other men. If he’s enough of a cunt to try and fuck her right here on the ground in the middle of the  Wolfswood .

Or perhaps it’s something simpler than that. He’s been guarding her for a while now and he’s never seen a man go into her rooms. Maybe she’s so desperate to have a man inside her she’ll take him, even with his face looking like it does and his hands that don’t know the first thing about how to touch a woman like her. At least that way she can be sure the man she’s bedding isn’t fool enough to think it could be anything more.

She hasn’t moved away. She’s just hovering right there, waiting.

The smell of flowers and fruit and  _ her _ washes over him. He could reach out and touch her face.

As if thinking it sends out  some kind of signal to her, Sansa slides her hand up and runs it through his hair, gently tucking it behind his ear. He can’t remember the last time someone’s done that to him. Maybe they never have.

Then, ever so slowly, she leans in again. 

Her nose brushes against the tangle of scarred flesh on his cheek, and he can feel her breath against his mouth, hot and sweet. Her lips touch his again and whatever breath he’d gotten back escapes him once more.

He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t move either, just letting her kiss him slowly at first and then faster. He’s horrified at himself when her tongue licks over his lower lip and his mouth opens to let out a guttural sound.

“Is this alright?” she asks, barely stopping kissing him, so the words come out muffled.

Is it alright? He wants to laugh at that. Is it alright that every time he kisses another woman, touches another woman, seven forbid fucks another woman from now on, he’ll only be able to think of this? Is it alright that she’ll want to forget this happened right away and he’ll have to pretend that he wants that too? That fucking her meant about as much to him as fucking one of the winter town whores?

No, it’s probably not alright.

But she’s smiling as she kisses him, and she sounds happy; so much happier today than he’s heard her sound since she was a child riding south to King’s Landing for the first time. 

So he just grunts his agreement and tries not to come straight away when she swings her leg over his hips and straddles him.

Her fingers work his shirt loose and then move to his breeches. 

He wants so desperately to touch her back. To tear the ties on her dress loose and look at the body underneath that he’s been imagining for years. To feel the skin of her breasts and her hips and her legs under his touch. To slide a hand between those legs and hear the noises she would make.

But she wouldn’t want an old dog touching her like that, he’s sure enough of that, so he fixes for settling his hands on her hips and trying to keep enough control to stop himself grinding between her legs.

She finishes with the ties on his breeches and gently slides a hand inside, lifting her hips slightly so she can grasp him.

He breaks the kiss to breathe in sharply. “Fuck.”

Her hand moves  slightly and his hips jerk involuntarily in response. He can smell her hair. See the curve of her lips as she smiles almost… nervously?

“Is that good?”

Seven hells, he wasn’t prepared for having her do this. Asking him these innocent questions while she’s stroking his cock. He’s not even going to last long enough to get inside her at this rate.

“Mm,” he grunts out, since it’s all he can manage. His breathing is quick and getting quicker by the second.

The frown on her forehead relaxes slightly. Her free hand takes hold of his and moves it up to her breast. He moves it back down immediately, unable to maintain his tenuous grip on the situation when he can feel her nipple hardening in his hand.

Then those small hands move her skirts out of the way, exposing a long expanse of white thigh and she sinks down onto him. She’s hot and so fucking wet as she takes him into her. He doesn’t understand how she can be that wet when he’s barely touched her, but it’s all around him and it feels so good he thinks he could stay like this forever, with her.

But she starts to  move and his control goes after that. His grip on her hips tightens and he pushes up into her. The bark on the tree digs into his back and she moans. A deep, raw moan that he knows will be the most beautiful sound he ever hears for the rest of his life.

Then, just like that, it’s over before it’s even properly begun. He releases inside her with a groan and he can see the surprise on her face as it happens.

She peels herself off him slowly. 

He feels his seed running down her leg as she does it and, for just a second, something wild and possessive roars to life in him. Then it’s gone, replaced with a burning disappointment that that might be the only time he gets to fuck Sansa Stark and he’s done a piss poor job of it.

She moves back to sit on her cloak across from the food. There’s a pink flush to her cheeks. Embarrassment, he thinks, probably on his behalf.

When she doesn’t say  anything he eventually grits out a “Sorry.”

“What?”

“It-” He doesn’t want to explain himself to  her but he can’t help it. “It’s not usually so... fast. I wasn’t expecting you to – to do that.”

She looks at him in silence for a long time, then a slight smile tugs at her lips. “Have something to eat,” she says. “We can try again afterwards.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was an interesting one to write.
> 
> Something that's always struck me in Sansan stories is how so many people write their first time as this mind blowing sexual experience, where I always imagine them being pretty awkward with one another to start with and having to find their way. 
> 
> I think he's seen her as this untouchable thing for so long that it would take time to break down that barrier, and I've tried hard to capture that here in a way that still does justice to their relationship.
> 
> Would love to know people's thoughts on whether a pretty awkward first encounter like this is still sweet in it's own way, or if it's just horrible to read!


End file.
